Public Health Preparedness and Response Research

CNA Corporation: Recognizing Best Practices in Training and Exercises for Public Health Response Leadership in Incident Management and Public Health Communication

This project will promote effective incident management and public health communication by highlighting best practices in training and exercises.

The study aims to:

• Identify existing evidence on the effectiveness of current training and exercise methods for developing public health response leadership competencies in incident management and public health communication
• Identify best practices from other fields that can be adapted for rapidly and effectively training personnel in domains outside of their usual roles to incident management at the response leadership level
• Identify the necessary improvements, challenges to implementations, and potential resolutions for training and exercise delivery for enhancing public health response leadership competences in applying incident management principles
• Identify the incident management functions in emergency response that should be prioritized for training and exercises among incident managers and response leaders
• Identify novel methods, tools, and/or mechanisms to develop and deliver training and exercise programs for enhancing public health response leadership competencies in applying incident management principles

RAND Corporation: Leveraging the Emerging Field of Disaster Citizen Science to Enhance Community Resilience and Improve Disaster Response

The project will characterize the rapidly emerging field of disaster citizen science, develop a model for how citizen science may promote resilience and engagement in preparedness activities, and provide guidance to local health departments and community groups for working collaboratively on disaster citizen science initiatives.

The study aims to:

• Explore the promise of disaster citizen science for increasing community resilience, enhancing participation in preparedness and response activities, and improving preparedness efforts
• Develop educational and instructional tools for communities and health departments to navigate and facilitate the evolution of disaster citizen science into mechanisms for collaboration

Harvard University: Participatory Mapping to Identify and Support At-Risk Populations in Emergency Preparedness

The project will create a participatory mapping process of preparedness assets that can be used by communities, in partnership with local governments, to address the needs of vulnerable populations. Major deliverables will include a list of strategies for addressing population needs in preparation and response to an emergency, an App (iOS and Android) for mapping community assets, and a tabletop exercise to test the impact of the participatory mapping results on the decision-making process of local agencies engaged in preparedness planning efforts.

The study aims to:

• Generate a list of strategies to address the needs of vulnerable populations by engaging community leaders in sharing their “local knowledge in preparedness”
• Create a participatory mapping process to map assets in the communities that can be used to address the needs of vulnerable populations
• Evaluate whether the availability of “local knowledge in preparedness” obtained from the applied participatory mapping process improves the quality of the decision-making process of public health officials responding to an emergency

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC: Structuring Industry-Tuned Public-Private Partnerships and Economic Incentives for U.S. Health Emergency Preparedness and Response

The project centers around a fundamental question: How can emerging concepts in innovative public-private partnerships and incentive models be leveraged to encourage private sector engagement and partnership in public health preparedness and response-related activities, including systems integration between public health and commercial healthcare entities? A key deliverable of this project will be an evidence based “playbook” detailing partnership incentives and strategies that are most likely to be effective for building and sustaining partnerships.

The study aims to:

• Develop a risk-sharing framework to provide actionable incentive program recommendations
• Identify key gaps by leveraging secondary research and data collection
• Identify key stakeholders to prioritize the mission areas and industry segments of interest
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis to test specific hypotheses of findings

Los Angeles County Department of Health: Determining Risks and Defining, Locating, and Reaching At-Risk Populations: A Research-based Risk Assessment and Mapping Tool

This project will conduct participatory research to develop a comprehensive methodology—and practical, software-based tool(s)—to empower local, state and national health agencies to identify, analyze, and depict health risks at the community level and enable the development of improved emergency plans, emergency response objectives and response capabilities that improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities in public health emergencies.

The study aims to:

• Determine how health and medical risk varies by hazard and geography
• Determine hazard specific impacts to vulnerable populations
• Develop a formula and methodology for assessing community based impact of 36 specific hazards on Public Health, Healthcare and Mental Health services
• Develop a web-based Risk Assessment, Mapping and Planning (RAMP) Tool for assessing risk and developing emergency health and medical plans for jurisdictions in the United States